Post by Rhys Bevan on Dec 27, 2008 17:22:52 GMT
OOC: This is the start of a book I've been writing for some time now, set during the Second World War, mainly in Lybia and Egypt, from the point of view of a young private (later corporal) in the 7th Armoured Division. Anyhoo, thought I'd grace you gentlemen with the prologue.
Constructive criticism much appreciated.
David Redwood had never felt so alive.
The dense forest of the Ashworth Estate was cloaked in an unwavering darkness. Harsh wind whipped at the young man’s face as the night’s blackness closed in on him. Invisible eyes seemed to follow his unruly path through the undergrowth; half-forgotten whispers hanged in the air around him. And he loved it.
The man came to a sudden halt and crouched down in the undergrowth, unslinging his old rifle from his back and looked up at the sky above him. Above the canopy of the trees, the velvet blanket of the night sky enveloped the world around him, starless and sombre, yet so beautiful at the same time. All that betrayed David’s presence was the dim light of the moon above him and perhaps the excited fire dancing in his eyes.
Long ago, there had been a time when David had been afraid of the dark. Afraid of what hid in the shadows. Afraid of what might happen when the lamps were put out. But not anymore. Nowadays, the darkness was his best friend. Without it, he would be unable to complete most of his many ventures of dubious legality. As he often told himself during the rare occasions when his conscience caught up with him, illegal ventures were generally a lot more fun. Perhaps this philosophy was not quite up to scratch with those of Plato or Aristotle but he stuck by it. And tonight was no exception.
A second man stumbled after him clumsily, breathing heavily and rubbing his head and groaning miserably. David pulled him down to the floor and cuffed him around the head with relish.
“Be quiet, would you?” he snapped.
“S’not my fault,” mumbled the newcomer in a whinging tone that would have better suited a five year old. “My head hurts,”
“Why?” said David distractedly, running his hand through his raven-like hair and turning to his friend in exasperation.
“Walked into a tree,”
David sighed. Stephen Harris had not been his first choice for a poaching partner. The fact that he had just came out worse in an unprovoked attack from an oak tree confirming his suspicions that the man had the stealth and agility of the average hippopotamus.
“Why have we stopped?” complained Harris.
“See for yourself,” David smiled, his grin broadening as he pushed away the staunch blades of grass before him to reveal the night’s plunder.
Pheasants. Fifty of the things, encircling the sky above the mens’ heads, completely oblivious to the fact that they had company. And, perhaps more specifically, company with guns. Arguably the worst kind of company for a pheasant.
David had stolen the rifles from a couple of Brittish squaddies on leave from the front line but a couple of days earlier. In David’s opinion, they would be put to much better use against poultry than the armies of the Third Reich. Pheasants, after all, didn’t have MP44 Machine Guns and David was relatively thankful for it.
“Remember,” he whispered to Harris, who was lying clumsily on his stomach, fussing over positioning his own, slightly battered rifle. “Every shot counts. We could wake up the Colonel in a second with these beauties so don’t waste shots. Understand?”
Harris nodded distractedly. Colonel Nicholas Ashworth was the proprietor of the Ashworth Estate, a military veteran who inspired bravery in some and terror in all. He was an intelligent man and had strong feelings over many a subject including the exact ownership of pheasants. As a consequence, neither David nor Harris were particularly keen on meeting the Colonel that night.
David scanned the surrounding area for his first target as Harris sent a phemoneally poorly-judged shot through the air, only to collide with the overhanging branch of a wiry thin tree. David raised an eyebrow at his companion’s ineptitude but said nothing. Instead, he reaised his own rifle and peered through the slightly damaged scope. A second later, the trigger was pulled. The shot rang true and David observed with a grin as a particularly plump pheasant plummeted to the earth with a dull thud.
“How d’you do that?” muttered Harris, sending a second useless shot flying through the midnight air, trying and failing to keep the irritance out of his voice
David turned to look at his companion and sighed.
“A little thing called aiming, Stephen,” he said, clapping him on the back in a mixture of comradeship and the desire to punch him. “You may have heard of it?”
Harris opened his mouth to retort but the dim sound of footsteps in the near distance snapped it shut. A dim light poked out among the darkness and in the newfound glow, David could see that his friend’s rubbery face had turned an ashen shade of pale.
“Somebody’s coming,” hissed Harris, stating the painfully obvious, his voice unnaturally high.
David ignored him and moved to lie flat on his stomach, signalling for Harris to do the same. His friend reluctantly followed suit, as David stayed as alert as possible, wishing his breathing could be more controlled and less horrifically…loud.
“Just stay completely still,” he breathed to the increasingly panicky Harris as the footsteps grew steadily louder and even more forboding than they had seconds earlier. “If we stay quiet, hopefully whoever’s coming will just…pass us by,”
“Sod that,” said Harris suddenly, rising to his feet and discarding his weapon violently at David’s side with a thud.
“Harris, you bloody…”
Harris backed away from his companion and charged blindly into the open, making his way frantically down the path.
“I know you’re there,” said a voice softly from out of sight, an arrogant, unpleasant voice that filled David’s heart with dread. Harris let out a girlish yelp at this and promptly blundered clumsily through the undergwoth, before disappearing from sight entirely. The footsteps grw louder…
“Harris, you bloody idiot, get back here…”
David leaped into the opening after his companion and instantly wished he hadn’t. Stood in front of him, brandishing a revolver and a dimly lit torch was Sir Henry Ashworth, the eldest son of the owner of the track of land that David had rather unceremoniously entered. Sir Henry was an established figure across the county, with dark black hair slicked backwards across his skull, an arrogantly pointed face and provocative, grey eyes. But David wasn’t interested in what he looked like. Truth be told, he was a tad more concerned with the revolver that was currently pointed straight at his chest.
“Well, well, well,” smiled Sir Henry, showing David every one of his perfectly white teeth. “What have we here, then?”
Colonel Nicholas Ashworth looked his best on the battlefield, drenched in the blood of his enemies, his weapon held high, his eyes burning with victory. He did not look quite so impressive dressed in striped pyjamas and a shabby purple dressing gown. Nevertheless, he had an awful air of unstoppability about him and David did not much like the option of having him as an enemy. Perhaps crime doesn’t pay, he thought darkly, as he tried to avoid eye contact with the great man.
“I found him in the woods, father,” said Sir Henry imperiously from the doorway. “Little scruffy here thought he’d try and shoot a few of our prize pheasants. Killed one of the poor blighters as well. He should be bloody shot himself, see how he likes it,”
“Yes. thank you, Henry,” said the Colonel calmly, without looking up from his inspection of David’s rifle. He turned to the poacher and raised one of his greying eyebrows slightly. “This gun? Yours?”
“No, sir,”
“A good thing too, lad, it’s crooked,” Ashworth looked up to glance at his guest. “How the hell did you manage to hit anything with this blasted thing?”
“I’ve had lots of practise, sir,” mumbled David, staring firmly at his boots.
“I don’t doubt it,” replied the Colonel, making eye contact with the young man since he had arrived and raised his eyebrows once more meaningfully. He sighed and then without warning threw the heavy firearm into David’s lap.
“You see that oak tree in the garden? Behind the rose bush? Try and hit it, lad,”
“This is hardly the time for japes, father,” interjected Sir Henry, seemingly irritated that his father had more interest in the shabby newcomer than he himself.
The Colonel ignored his son and watched intently as David took aim cautiously and fired. Even in the darkness, it was clear that the bullet had hit its mark; the deadly projectile had embedded itself spectacularly into the tree’s wizened old trunk.
“I say, bravo,” said the Colonel cheerfully, clapping David heartily on the back. “You’re a bally good shot, lad, and no doubt about it,”
“Oh, bravo,” said Sir Henry sullenly. “What this young fellow needs, father, is a bloody good beating not appraisal. I’m sure Dick Turpin could hit a target as well as the next man but he was still a crook and he got what was coming for him. Rather like this fellow,” he added, glancing at David unpleasantly.
“What’s your name, lad?” asked the Colonel loudly, ignoring Sir Henry with relish.
“David Redwood, sir,” answered David shortly, not entirely sure what was going on.
“Well, Davey, m’boy,” said the Colonel, clapping his grizzled hands together. “We’re always on the look out for good men to join the 7th Armoured Division. I lead its Third Batallion, don’t you know. We could put all this behind us if you’d be willing to join us chaps up front in Africa,”
“No, thanks…sir,” said David expressionlessly. He had no intention of being forced to fight in a war he had spent the past two years trying to get out of because of a foppish braggart and a couple of pheasants.
“Oh, I’m not asking, lad,” said the Colonel. His voice remained as cheerful as ever but his eyes suddenly grew cold. “We lost a lot of men in Tobruk, we’re rather desperate for some new blood and you…well…you’ve fallen right into my lap, so to speak,”
“How about this for an offer,” smirked Sir Henry, joining his father’s side. “You can go to fight under myself and my father in Africa, or you can spend the rest of your life rotting in prison. It’s entirely your choice, Mr Redwood,”
David let out a sharp breath and stared up at the Ashworths, a mixture of confusion, anger and desperation in his eyes.
“I can’t…I…I don’t want to go to war,” protested David, wishing he could sound just a tad less pathetic. “I’m…I’m not a soldier,”
“If there’s one thing I hate as much as a crook, Redwood,” said Sir Henry coldly. “It’s a coward. And if I’m not mistaken, you fit into both categories very nicely,”
David looked up at the two men and realised that he was beaten. He wasn’t entirely sure what had just happened, but whatever it was, he knew it wasn’t good.
.“Do you enjoy sending men to their deaths?” he murmured expressionlessly, trying to avoid the smirking face of Henry Ashworth.
“Oh, it makes the long Winter nights just fly by,” smiled the Colonel. “Now be a good fellow, Private Redwood and get some sleep. You can sleep here tonight; it won’t do for my men to sleep in whatever god-forsaken hole you crawled out of. Tomorrow, Davey, you become a soldier,”
ONE
Six months later.
The red-hot African sun rose through the humid airs of the Libyan plain, a single beacon of light in the endless wasteland that was the Sahara Desert.
The 7th Armoured Division, 9th Battallion marched through the plains, prey to the merciless heat that bore down on them. Five hundred pairs of hobnailed boots crunched down on the desert’s fine sand, five hundred rifles were swung across five hundred shoulders and five hundred men wished that they’d stayed at home.
At the head of the battallion, Colonel Nicholas Ashworth marched without expression through the desert, followed stoutly by the grizzled Scottish Lieteunant-Colonel McLaren who, for once it seemed, was completely sober.
Behind them advanced countless officers, swarms of senior NCO’s and finally, a sea of private soldiers, trying not to faint beneath the relentless glare of the Lybian sun.
The privates were the lowest of the low; the cannon fodder. It didn’t matter to the echelons above whether they lived or died. But it mattered to the privates a good deal. And it particularly mattered to David Redwood, the lowest of the lowest of the low.
David swallowed hoarsely and glanced over his shoulder at the empty plain behind him. In a strange way, the Sahara was beautiful. The horizon was stunning; that much was obvious. Perhaps even more so when it wasn’t blotted out by hundreds upon hundreds of Italian soldiers.
Of course, David Redwood wasn’t in Africa to admire the view. He was there to fight. And, more likely than not, he was also there to die.
“Here you go, limey, take a sip of this,” grinned Corporal John Hadfield, handing him a half-empty water canteen. David smiled weakly and took a grateful swig from the bottle.
John Hadfield was a young American who had been serving in the British Army for the past seven years, having received a promotion for holding his own spectacularly in the Siege of Tobruk, saving the life of his commanding officer as he did so. He was popular among the men although it would be a lie to say that David had not had the strong desire to give him a good kick once in a while. He was one of the few machine gunners within the battallion and his weapon of choice, a Thompson SMG, hung provoticatively over his shoulder. The kind of damage the weapon could inflict on human flesh, David didn’t like to think about. However, he had the strange feeling that Hadfield did like thinking about it. And that he thought about it an awful lot.
“Where exactly are we going, John?” wheezed Christopher Teal from just ahead, as David hobbled forwards as best he could, handing the canteen back to the American.
Although the men had been marching through North Africa for the past two weeks, none of them was entirely sure why. The officers, it seemed, had conveniently forgotten to tell them.
“We’re going to fight, boys,” answered Hadfield vaguely, absent-mindedly patting the sandstorm of dust from his tunic.
“I'll fight, till from my bones my flesh be hacked,” quoted Teal solemnly.
Hadfield raised an eyebrow.
“Macbeth,” the private explained, reddening slightly. “Shakespeare,” he added, at the American’s blank expression.
“Well, thanks for lightening the mood,” grinned Hadfield, a bemused expression on his lightly tanned face. He glanced over his shoulder. “Hurry up, you!” he called bracingly.
The small gaggle of men who staggered behind David quickened their pace. David smiled as the familiar faces of his young friends, Puck Merchant and Thomas Higham, reached his side.
Puck’s real name was Harry – or so, he reckoned – but he had been known as Puck for so long that Harry had more or less been buried by the familiarity of his nick-name. He was more boy than man, although his light grey eyes betrayed a kind of wisdom beyond his years, though admittedly well-hidden. However much his youthful optimism wished it, Puck was not a soldier and many of the men had no doubt that it would only be a matter of time before the all-engulfing war proved to be too much for him. Despite this, he was showing incredible resilience and seemed to be, perhaps, the only private in the whole battallion who was truly enjoying himself.
Higham was a slightly plump private from South-West Wales with tangled brown hair and a cheerful face who had joined the British Army the second war had broken out. As a devout Christian, he was relatively unpopular within the camp; his enthusiastic preachings of ,“Love thy neighbour” , never really warranted rave reviews. Particularly when the only neighbours the men were currently aware of happened to be the Axis forces.
“Surivivng?” grinned David.
“Never been better,” replied Puck with a smile as Higham muttered mutinously to himself. “Any idea when we’re going to arrive?”
“I don’t think even the Colonel knows,” said David. “Not that he seems to knows much anyway…”
The private’s eyes were getting wary, his vision impaired by a kind of relentless bluriness. Hopefully Ashworth and his cronies would pull to a halt presently and give the men a well-earned rest. If they didn’t, David was sure he would keel over from exhaustion.
David’s hope was destroyed in an instant as the sound of the sound of the Colonel Bogey March suddenly filled the air, masked only by some enthusiastic swearing on Hadfield’s part.
“If they’ve only just started screeching, we won’t be getting a nap for bloody ages,” groaned Private Ward, voicing everyone’s thoughts.
Only Puck attempted to carry the tune but he gave up halfway through the first verse, his voice, hoarse from lack of water, getting the better of him. David and a particularly cynical private by the name of Parker exchanged looks.
“Come on, Taffy,” grinned Teal, nodding towards the straggling Higham. “I thought your lot was supposed to be good at singing,”
“We’re better at punching,”bristled Higham, suddenly defensive.
“Hey, come on, save it for the krauts,” interjected Hadfield lazily.
Higham dropped behind and began to mutter to himself almost silently in Welsh. David had no idea what he was saying but he doubted he was exactly singing the praises of Christopher Teal.
Suddenly the march – and the battallion – drew to a swift halt. David breathed thankfully.
“Thank God,” he muttered, glancing over at Puck who, despite his unwavering optimism, was clearly exhausted. Higham, it seemed, was struggling to breath and Teal was wheezing like a man three times his age. Only Hadfield seemed to have been untroubled by the long journey – he was used to it, David gathered. He had been in battle.
Although he had effectively been serving in the Armed Forces for almost six months now, the private had not actually done any fighting for King and Country or otherwise. He was terrified at the prospect of being in battle; shooting pheasants was all well and good but he suspected that Rommel’s forces would put up something of a better fight. David had even considered deserting once or twice. But, every time the thought crossed his mind, he knew that it would be impossible to survive alone in the wasteland that was the Libyan desert. He had often thought of attempting to recruit a companion but then, the only one he truly trusted was Puck and he knew full well that he would be more of a liability than anything. No. For now he was stuck.
But on the other hand, at least he had stopped marching.
The British encampement – made up of a sea of tents, pavillions and even the odd tank- stood somewhat out of place in the desert. The men slept soundly within their tents, completely at peace in their slumber, safe in their dreams where alone they weren’t plagued by wave after wave of enemy gunfire. On the entire battallion, only a handful of men were awake. And they weren’t exactly happy about it.
David rubbed his tired eyes groggily, forcing his flailing body to stay awake and alert. The sharp drop in temperature over the past couple of hours had been inevitably jarring and is struck David that he had never been less comfortable in his life. The thin blanket bound tightly around his waist was little short of pathetic and all five men were shivering miserably.
The frosty night was rendered even colder by the presence of Sergeant Kieran Bourne, who sat opposite David, his grizzled fingers tapping a beat on the holster of his revolver. Bourne was one of the company’s three common Sergeants alongside O’Rourke, a striking Irishman, and Williams, a bold man who hailed from Cardiff.
Bourne was easily the least popular; bitter and deformed by horrific wounds he had sustained during the Great War. He was a crony of Sir Henry Ashworth’s and this was in itself good enough reason for the men to hate him. Bourne was held in contempt by those above him as well as those below him, not least Sir Henry himself.
He fought on the battlefield like a man posessed, taking out all the hurt he had sustained over the years out on the enemy. And if none of the enemy was present then his own men would serve as a good enough punching bag.
“So,” began Puck aimlessly.
“Quiet, private,” snapped Bourne instantly, leaping at the chance to turn on someone. “Keep your concentration on watching out for the enemy,”
Even in the darkness, David could tell that Puck’s face was reddening. He snorted under his breath. The camaraderie of the British Army…
Privates Higham and Edwards, the other unfortunate guards, shuffled uncomfortably as David raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes, knowing full well that the night’s work was a pointless excersise. If there were any Germans around, they would know by now, he knew that much. And he doubted that the introductions would be particularly friendly.
David glanced over his shoulder, passing the binoculars over to Higham, and furrowed his eyebrows. He was sure he had heard something…
There it was again.
David rubbed his eyes; lack of sleep, he told himself. And who was to blame for that, he thought pointedly, glowering towards the oblivious Bourne.
But when he heard the noise for the third time…
Bourne’s head snapped up.
“What the hell was that?” he demanded coarsely, glaring at the four privates provocatively.
“Not a clue,” piped up Edwards.
“Not a clue, Sergeant.”
“Not a clue, Sergeant,”
Bourne sighed and rubbed his eyes, before rising to his feet. He nodded at David and Puck.
“You two come with me,” he grunted, sizing the men up compared to the ridiciolously slight Edwards and decidedly plump Higham. “See what’s going on. You two stay here,” he added harshly, nodding towards the remainder of the party.
“Fine by me,” muttered Higham under his breath, thankfully out of Bourne’s ear-shot. Edwards, who was too good-natured to say anything, merely smiled weakly at David before returning to the job at hand.
Although David was relieved that Puck would be his companion, as he greatly preferred the young man to the other two privates, he felt uneasy about the young man’s presence. The voice had sounded worryingly human and if a fight were to break out …David glanced over at Puck, who smiled cheerfully, and glanced at the well-looked-after rifle at his side. He had hoped that Puck would never have to pull the trigger of that same rifle but then, war rarely tailored itself around the wishes of the common soldiers.
“Come on, then,” growled Bourne through gritted teeth, gesturing for David and Puck to follow him.
“What d’you think it was?” hissed Puck, a childish excitement ringing in his voice.
“We’ll find out soon enough, whatever it was,” replied David simply, tightening his grip on the icy metal of his rifle.
Bourne hesitated as he reached the outskirts of the British camp. David could understand the Sergeant’s reluctance to leave the relative safety of the base; they would be extremely vulnerable out in the open.
“I heard there were tigers out here,” noted Puck eagerly, as if he could think of nothing more entertaining than coming across a huge, man-eating beast in the pitch black.
Both David and Bourne ignored him and so the young private fell silent.
At last, Bourne moved out of the camp’s boundaries, signalling impatiently for the two younger men to follow him into the open.
“Aiuto! Qualcuno mi aiuti!”
David and Bourne exchanged glances. Even in the darkness, David could see that the a wild excitement dancing in Bourne’s beetle-like eyes. The hunt was on.
Without explanation, Bourne began jogging heavily towards the sparse woodlands that stretched from the South. The trees were pathetically wiry and thin and spread few and far between but it was sufficient cover to hide a number of men. Or a single intruder, David realised.
As the three men moved cautiously towards the woodlands, a disgusting stench seemed to rise up and punch David squarely in the face. The stench of urine, the stench of human waste and…and…the stench of death.
“Aiuto! In nome di Dio, aiutami!”
It was unmistakably the screams of a dying man. A man who, as far as Bourne was concerned, couldn’t die soon enough.
Moving through a particularly rough patch of foliage, the party stopped. Because there, crumpled desperately before them, was the enemy.
David actually felt rather disappointed. He had always been told that the Fascist forces under Hitler and Mussolini were heartless, brutal, evil…bastards. The man before him didn’t exactly fit this description. In fact, David had never seen a more pathetic figure.
Warm blood seeped from a vicious gash to the man’s forehead, his eyes were glazed over and beginning to roll into their sockets and his entire body lay limp on the desert’s floor.
“Bloody Dago bastard,” snarled Bourne. “Probably trying to cut our throats while we slept,”
David was about to answer back but he couldn’t move. His eyes were fixed on the man who even now was spluttering out his final choked breaths. His stomach gave a horrible squirm. The man could not have been very much older than Puck.
The Italian soldier suddenly seemed aware of the Allied presence. He looked up at them blindly, dying breaths rattling his body.
“Io…Io…arrendersi. Per favore. Misericordia!” he choked wretchedly, reminding David horrifically, yet so vividly, of a gutted fish.
The only member of John Hadfield’s squad who had any proficient grasp on the Italian language - with the exception of a a shady, weasel-faced man by the name of Archer - was Private Teal – but both David and Puck had at least a basic grasp on what the dying man was saying. He was begging for mercy.
Shooting Bourne a glance, David knew that none would be forthcoming. If his countless wounds didn’t kill him, then Kieran Bourne would.
“I…I don’t want to look at him anymore,” murmured Puck, his face ghostly pale, his lower lip wobbling rebelliously. Bourne span around to face Puck and for the first time in his life, David saw the man smile.
“Well, luckily, you won’t have to for much longer,” he said dangerously softly. “Because you’re going to kill him…aren’t you, private?”
“I…what…?”
“Kill him. Do you want me to draw you a diagram?”
“I can’t,”
“Yes. You can,”
“I can’t,”
“You will,” snarled Bourne, all traces of softness removed from disformed face. “And that’s an order. Unless you fancy being court-martialled?”
Puck was shaking uncontrollably. David knew that the young man saw this war as little more than a game. But now, it looked like the rules had changed. And suddenly, the game wasn’t easy anymore.
David stared at his boots. He couldn’t let Puck kill a defenceless man, it would destroy him. And Puck was one of the last bastions of innocence within the battallion…
“I’ll do it,” he said quietely, looking down expressionlessly at the dying man at his feet. “I’ll…I’ll bloody do it,”
Smirking, Bourne handed him his own Webley Mk IV
Revolver; a side-arm that had doubtless spilt its fair share of German blood.
The metal was cold in David’s trained hands but the steely look in Bourne’s eyes was colder. There were few men the young man hated more than the Sergeant, and he silently vowed to one day make Bourne feel as utterly hopeless as the Italian whose death warrant he had effectively signed.
Feeling his blood run cold, David swallowed and took a deep breath, a luxury the Italian could no longer afford. The private squeezed the trigger of the revolver with one sudden, fatal flex of his finger.
And suddenly, David Redwood was a killer.
Constructive criticism much appreciated.
PROLOGUE
David Redwood had never felt so alive.
The dense forest of the Ashworth Estate was cloaked in an unwavering darkness. Harsh wind whipped at the young man’s face as the night’s blackness closed in on him. Invisible eyes seemed to follow his unruly path through the undergrowth; half-forgotten whispers hanged in the air around him. And he loved it.
The man came to a sudden halt and crouched down in the undergrowth, unslinging his old rifle from his back and looked up at the sky above him. Above the canopy of the trees, the velvet blanket of the night sky enveloped the world around him, starless and sombre, yet so beautiful at the same time. All that betrayed David’s presence was the dim light of the moon above him and perhaps the excited fire dancing in his eyes.
Long ago, there had been a time when David had been afraid of the dark. Afraid of what hid in the shadows. Afraid of what might happen when the lamps were put out. But not anymore. Nowadays, the darkness was his best friend. Without it, he would be unable to complete most of his many ventures of dubious legality. As he often told himself during the rare occasions when his conscience caught up with him, illegal ventures were generally a lot more fun. Perhaps this philosophy was not quite up to scratch with those of Plato or Aristotle but he stuck by it. And tonight was no exception.
A second man stumbled after him clumsily, breathing heavily and rubbing his head and groaning miserably. David pulled him down to the floor and cuffed him around the head with relish.
“Be quiet, would you?” he snapped.
“S’not my fault,” mumbled the newcomer in a whinging tone that would have better suited a five year old. “My head hurts,”
“Why?” said David distractedly, running his hand through his raven-like hair and turning to his friend in exasperation.
“Walked into a tree,”
David sighed. Stephen Harris had not been his first choice for a poaching partner. The fact that he had just came out worse in an unprovoked attack from an oak tree confirming his suspicions that the man had the stealth and agility of the average hippopotamus.
“Why have we stopped?” complained Harris.
“See for yourself,” David smiled, his grin broadening as he pushed away the staunch blades of grass before him to reveal the night’s plunder.
Pheasants. Fifty of the things, encircling the sky above the mens’ heads, completely oblivious to the fact that they had company. And, perhaps more specifically, company with guns. Arguably the worst kind of company for a pheasant.
David had stolen the rifles from a couple of Brittish squaddies on leave from the front line but a couple of days earlier. In David’s opinion, they would be put to much better use against poultry than the armies of the Third Reich. Pheasants, after all, didn’t have MP44 Machine Guns and David was relatively thankful for it.
“Remember,” he whispered to Harris, who was lying clumsily on his stomach, fussing over positioning his own, slightly battered rifle. “Every shot counts. We could wake up the Colonel in a second with these beauties so don’t waste shots. Understand?”
Harris nodded distractedly. Colonel Nicholas Ashworth was the proprietor of the Ashworth Estate, a military veteran who inspired bravery in some and terror in all. He was an intelligent man and had strong feelings over many a subject including the exact ownership of pheasants. As a consequence, neither David nor Harris were particularly keen on meeting the Colonel that night.
David scanned the surrounding area for his first target as Harris sent a phemoneally poorly-judged shot through the air, only to collide with the overhanging branch of a wiry thin tree. David raised an eyebrow at his companion’s ineptitude but said nothing. Instead, he reaised his own rifle and peered through the slightly damaged scope. A second later, the trigger was pulled. The shot rang true and David observed with a grin as a particularly plump pheasant plummeted to the earth with a dull thud.
“How d’you do that?” muttered Harris, sending a second useless shot flying through the midnight air, trying and failing to keep the irritance out of his voice
David turned to look at his companion and sighed.
“A little thing called aiming, Stephen,” he said, clapping him on the back in a mixture of comradeship and the desire to punch him. “You may have heard of it?”
Harris opened his mouth to retort but the dim sound of footsteps in the near distance snapped it shut. A dim light poked out among the darkness and in the newfound glow, David could see that his friend’s rubbery face had turned an ashen shade of pale.
“Somebody’s coming,” hissed Harris, stating the painfully obvious, his voice unnaturally high.
David ignored him and moved to lie flat on his stomach, signalling for Harris to do the same. His friend reluctantly followed suit, as David stayed as alert as possible, wishing his breathing could be more controlled and less horrifically…loud.
“Just stay completely still,” he breathed to the increasingly panicky Harris as the footsteps grew steadily louder and even more forboding than they had seconds earlier. “If we stay quiet, hopefully whoever’s coming will just…pass us by,”
“Sod that,” said Harris suddenly, rising to his feet and discarding his weapon violently at David’s side with a thud.
“Harris, you bloody…”
Harris backed away from his companion and charged blindly into the open, making his way frantically down the path.
“I know you’re there,” said a voice softly from out of sight, an arrogant, unpleasant voice that filled David’s heart with dread. Harris let out a girlish yelp at this and promptly blundered clumsily through the undergwoth, before disappearing from sight entirely. The footsteps grw louder…
“Harris, you bloody idiot, get back here…”
David leaped into the opening after his companion and instantly wished he hadn’t. Stood in front of him, brandishing a revolver and a dimly lit torch was Sir Henry Ashworth, the eldest son of the owner of the track of land that David had rather unceremoniously entered. Sir Henry was an established figure across the county, with dark black hair slicked backwards across his skull, an arrogantly pointed face and provocative, grey eyes. But David wasn’t interested in what he looked like. Truth be told, he was a tad more concerned with the revolver that was currently pointed straight at his chest.
“Well, well, well,” smiled Sir Henry, showing David every one of his perfectly white teeth. “What have we here, then?”
***
Colonel Nicholas Ashworth looked his best on the battlefield, drenched in the blood of his enemies, his weapon held high, his eyes burning with victory. He did not look quite so impressive dressed in striped pyjamas and a shabby purple dressing gown. Nevertheless, he had an awful air of unstoppability about him and David did not much like the option of having him as an enemy. Perhaps crime doesn’t pay, he thought darkly, as he tried to avoid eye contact with the great man.
“I found him in the woods, father,” said Sir Henry imperiously from the doorway. “Little scruffy here thought he’d try and shoot a few of our prize pheasants. Killed one of the poor blighters as well. He should be bloody shot himself, see how he likes it,”
“Yes. thank you, Henry,” said the Colonel calmly, without looking up from his inspection of David’s rifle. He turned to the poacher and raised one of his greying eyebrows slightly. “This gun? Yours?”
“No, sir,”
“A good thing too, lad, it’s crooked,” Ashworth looked up to glance at his guest. “How the hell did you manage to hit anything with this blasted thing?”
“I’ve had lots of practise, sir,” mumbled David, staring firmly at his boots.
“I don’t doubt it,” replied the Colonel, making eye contact with the young man since he had arrived and raised his eyebrows once more meaningfully. He sighed and then without warning threw the heavy firearm into David’s lap.
“You see that oak tree in the garden? Behind the rose bush? Try and hit it, lad,”
“This is hardly the time for japes, father,” interjected Sir Henry, seemingly irritated that his father had more interest in the shabby newcomer than he himself.
The Colonel ignored his son and watched intently as David took aim cautiously and fired. Even in the darkness, it was clear that the bullet had hit its mark; the deadly projectile had embedded itself spectacularly into the tree’s wizened old trunk.
“I say, bravo,” said the Colonel cheerfully, clapping David heartily on the back. “You’re a bally good shot, lad, and no doubt about it,”
“Oh, bravo,” said Sir Henry sullenly. “What this young fellow needs, father, is a bloody good beating not appraisal. I’m sure Dick Turpin could hit a target as well as the next man but he was still a crook and he got what was coming for him. Rather like this fellow,” he added, glancing at David unpleasantly.
“What’s your name, lad?” asked the Colonel loudly, ignoring Sir Henry with relish.
“David Redwood, sir,” answered David shortly, not entirely sure what was going on.
“Well, Davey, m’boy,” said the Colonel, clapping his grizzled hands together. “We’re always on the look out for good men to join the 7th Armoured Division. I lead its Third Batallion, don’t you know. We could put all this behind us if you’d be willing to join us chaps up front in Africa,”
“No, thanks…sir,” said David expressionlessly. He had no intention of being forced to fight in a war he had spent the past two years trying to get out of because of a foppish braggart and a couple of pheasants.
“Oh, I’m not asking, lad,” said the Colonel. His voice remained as cheerful as ever but his eyes suddenly grew cold. “We lost a lot of men in Tobruk, we’re rather desperate for some new blood and you…well…you’ve fallen right into my lap, so to speak,”
“How about this for an offer,” smirked Sir Henry, joining his father’s side. “You can go to fight under myself and my father in Africa, or you can spend the rest of your life rotting in prison. It’s entirely your choice, Mr Redwood,”
David let out a sharp breath and stared up at the Ashworths, a mixture of confusion, anger and desperation in his eyes.
“I can’t…I…I don’t want to go to war,” protested David, wishing he could sound just a tad less pathetic. “I’m…I’m not a soldier,”
“If there’s one thing I hate as much as a crook, Redwood,” said Sir Henry coldly. “It’s a coward. And if I’m not mistaken, you fit into both categories very nicely,”
David looked up at the two men and realised that he was beaten. He wasn’t entirely sure what had just happened, but whatever it was, he knew it wasn’t good.
.“Do you enjoy sending men to their deaths?” he murmured expressionlessly, trying to avoid the smirking face of Henry Ashworth.
“Oh, it makes the long Winter nights just fly by,” smiled the Colonel. “Now be a good fellow, Private Redwood and get some sleep. You can sleep here tonight; it won’t do for my men to sleep in whatever god-forsaken hole you crawled out of. Tomorrow, Davey, you become a soldier,”
ONE
Six months later.
The red-hot African sun rose through the humid airs of the Libyan plain, a single beacon of light in the endless wasteland that was the Sahara Desert.
The 7th Armoured Division, 9th Battallion marched through the plains, prey to the merciless heat that bore down on them. Five hundred pairs of hobnailed boots crunched down on the desert’s fine sand, five hundred rifles were swung across five hundred shoulders and five hundred men wished that they’d stayed at home.
At the head of the battallion, Colonel Nicholas Ashworth marched without expression through the desert, followed stoutly by the grizzled Scottish Lieteunant-Colonel McLaren who, for once it seemed, was completely sober.
Behind them advanced countless officers, swarms of senior NCO’s and finally, a sea of private soldiers, trying not to faint beneath the relentless glare of the Lybian sun.
The privates were the lowest of the low; the cannon fodder. It didn’t matter to the echelons above whether they lived or died. But it mattered to the privates a good deal. And it particularly mattered to David Redwood, the lowest of the lowest of the low.
David swallowed hoarsely and glanced over his shoulder at the empty plain behind him. In a strange way, the Sahara was beautiful. The horizon was stunning; that much was obvious. Perhaps even more so when it wasn’t blotted out by hundreds upon hundreds of Italian soldiers.
Of course, David Redwood wasn’t in Africa to admire the view. He was there to fight. And, more likely than not, he was also there to die.
“Here you go, limey, take a sip of this,” grinned Corporal John Hadfield, handing him a half-empty water canteen. David smiled weakly and took a grateful swig from the bottle.
John Hadfield was a young American who had been serving in the British Army for the past seven years, having received a promotion for holding his own spectacularly in the Siege of Tobruk, saving the life of his commanding officer as he did so. He was popular among the men although it would be a lie to say that David had not had the strong desire to give him a good kick once in a while. He was one of the few machine gunners within the battallion and his weapon of choice, a Thompson SMG, hung provoticatively over his shoulder. The kind of damage the weapon could inflict on human flesh, David didn’t like to think about. However, he had the strange feeling that Hadfield did like thinking about it. And that he thought about it an awful lot.
“Where exactly are we going, John?” wheezed Christopher Teal from just ahead, as David hobbled forwards as best he could, handing the canteen back to the American.
Although the men had been marching through North Africa for the past two weeks, none of them was entirely sure why. The officers, it seemed, had conveniently forgotten to tell them.
“We’re going to fight, boys,” answered Hadfield vaguely, absent-mindedly patting the sandstorm of dust from his tunic.
“I'll fight, till from my bones my flesh be hacked,” quoted Teal solemnly.
Hadfield raised an eyebrow.
“Macbeth,” the private explained, reddening slightly. “Shakespeare,” he added, at the American’s blank expression.
“Well, thanks for lightening the mood,” grinned Hadfield, a bemused expression on his lightly tanned face. He glanced over his shoulder. “Hurry up, you!” he called bracingly.
The small gaggle of men who staggered behind David quickened their pace. David smiled as the familiar faces of his young friends, Puck Merchant and Thomas Higham, reached his side.
Puck’s real name was Harry – or so, he reckoned – but he had been known as Puck for so long that Harry had more or less been buried by the familiarity of his nick-name. He was more boy than man, although his light grey eyes betrayed a kind of wisdom beyond his years, though admittedly well-hidden. However much his youthful optimism wished it, Puck was not a soldier and many of the men had no doubt that it would only be a matter of time before the all-engulfing war proved to be too much for him. Despite this, he was showing incredible resilience and seemed to be, perhaps, the only private in the whole battallion who was truly enjoying himself.
Higham was a slightly plump private from South-West Wales with tangled brown hair and a cheerful face who had joined the British Army the second war had broken out. As a devout Christian, he was relatively unpopular within the camp; his enthusiastic preachings of ,“Love thy neighbour” , never really warranted rave reviews. Particularly when the only neighbours the men were currently aware of happened to be the Axis forces.
“Surivivng?” grinned David.
“Never been better,” replied Puck with a smile as Higham muttered mutinously to himself. “Any idea when we’re going to arrive?”
“I don’t think even the Colonel knows,” said David. “Not that he seems to knows much anyway…”
The private’s eyes were getting wary, his vision impaired by a kind of relentless bluriness. Hopefully Ashworth and his cronies would pull to a halt presently and give the men a well-earned rest. If they didn’t, David was sure he would keel over from exhaustion.
David’s hope was destroyed in an instant as the sound of the sound of the Colonel Bogey March suddenly filled the air, masked only by some enthusiastic swearing on Hadfield’s part.
“If they’ve only just started screeching, we won’t be getting a nap for bloody ages,” groaned Private Ward, voicing everyone’s thoughts.
Only Puck attempted to carry the tune but he gave up halfway through the first verse, his voice, hoarse from lack of water, getting the better of him. David and a particularly cynical private by the name of Parker exchanged looks.
“Come on, Taffy,” grinned Teal, nodding towards the straggling Higham. “I thought your lot was supposed to be good at singing,”
“We’re better at punching,”bristled Higham, suddenly defensive.
“Hey, come on, save it for the krauts,” interjected Hadfield lazily.
Higham dropped behind and began to mutter to himself almost silently in Welsh. David had no idea what he was saying but he doubted he was exactly singing the praises of Christopher Teal.
Suddenly the march – and the battallion – drew to a swift halt. David breathed thankfully.
“Thank God,” he muttered, glancing over at Puck who, despite his unwavering optimism, was clearly exhausted. Higham, it seemed, was struggling to breath and Teal was wheezing like a man three times his age. Only Hadfield seemed to have been untroubled by the long journey – he was used to it, David gathered. He had been in battle.
Although he had effectively been serving in the Armed Forces for almost six months now, the private had not actually done any fighting for King and Country or otherwise. He was terrified at the prospect of being in battle; shooting pheasants was all well and good but he suspected that Rommel’s forces would put up something of a better fight. David had even considered deserting once or twice. But, every time the thought crossed his mind, he knew that it would be impossible to survive alone in the wasteland that was the Libyan desert. He had often thought of attempting to recruit a companion but then, the only one he truly trusted was Puck and he knew full well that he would be more of a liability than anything. No. For now he was stuck.
But on the other hand, at least he had stopped marching.
***
The British encampement – made up of a sea of tents, pavillions and even the odd tank- stood somewhat out of place in the desert. The men slept soundly within their tents, completely at peace in their slumber, safe in their dreams where alone they weren’t plagued by wave after wave of enemy gunfire. On the entire battallion, only a handful of men were awake. And they weren’t exactly happy about it.
David rubbed his tired eyes groggily, forcing his flailing body to stay awake and alert. The sharp drop in temperature over the past couple of hours had been inevitably jarring and is struck David that he had never been less comfortable in his life. The thin blanket bound tightly around his waist was little short of pathetic and all five men were shivering miserably.
The frosty night was rendered even colder by the presence of Sergeant Kieran Bourne, who sat opposite David, his grizzled fingers tapping a beat on the holster of his revolver. Bourne was one of the company’s three common Sergeants alongside O’Rourke, a striking Irishman, and Williams, a bold man who hailed from Cardiff.
Bourne was easily the least popular; bitter and deformed by horrific wounds he had sustained during the Great War. He was a crony of Sir Henry Ashworth’s and this was in itself good enough reason for the men to hate him. Bourne was held in contempt by those above him as well as those below him, not least Sir Henry himself.
He fought on the battlefield like a man posessed, taking out all the hurt he had sustained over the years out on the enemy. And if none of the enemy was present then his own men would serve as a good enough punching bag.
“So,” began Puck aimlessly.
“Quiet, private,” snapped Bourne instantly, leaping at the chance to turn on someone. “Keep your concentration on watching out for the enemy,”
Even in the darkness, David could tell that Puck’s face was reddening. He snorted under his breath. The camaraderie of the British Army…
Privates Higham and Edwards, the other unfortunate guards, shuffled uncomfortably as David raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes, knowing full well that the night’s work was a pointless excersise. If there were any Germans around, they would know by now, he knew that much. And he doubted that the introductions would be particularly friendly.
David glanced over his shoulder, passing the binoculars over to Higham, and furrowed his eyebrows. He was sure he had heard something…
There it was again.
David rubbed his eyes; lack of sleep, he told himself. And who was to blame for that, he thought pointedly, glowering towards the oblivious Bourne.
But when he heard the noise for the third time…
Bourne’s head snapped up.
“What the hell was that?” he demanded coarsely, glaring at the four privates provocatively.
“Not a clue,” piped up Edwards.
“Not a clue, Sergeant.”
“Not a clue, Sergeant,”
Bourne sighed and rubbed his eyes, before rising to his feet. He nodded at David and Puck.
“You two come with me,” he grunted, sizing the men up compared to the ridiciolously slight Edwards and decidedly plump Higham. “See what’s going on. You two stay here,” he added harshly, nodding towards the remainder of the party.
“Fine by me,” muttered Higham under his breath, thankfully out of Bourne’s ear-shot. Edwards, who was too good-natured to say anything, merely smiled weakly at David before returning to the job at hand.
Although David was relieved that Puck would be his companion, as he greatly preferred the young man to the other two privates, he felt uneasy about the young man’s presence. The voice had sounded worryingly human and if a fight were to break out …David glanced over at Puck, who smiled cheerfully, and glanced at the well-looked-after rifle at his side. He had hoped that Puck would never have to pull the trigger of that same rifle but then, war rarely tailored itself around the wishes of the common soldiers.
“Come on, then,” growled Bourne through gritted teeth, gesturing for David and Puck to follow him.
“What d’you think it was?” hissed Puck, a childish excitement ringing in his voice.
“We’ll find out soon enough, whatever it was,” replied David simply, tightening his grip on the icy metal of his rifle.
Bourne hesitated as he reached the outskirts of the British camp. David could understand the Sergeant’s reluctance to leave the relative safety of the base; they would be extremely vulnerable out in the open.
“I heard there were tigers out here,” noted Puck eagerly, as if he could think of nothing more entertaining than coming across a huge, man-eating beast in the pitch black.
Both David and Bourne ignored him and so the young private fell silent.
At last, Bourne moved out of the camp’s boundaries, signalling impatiently for the two younger men to follow him into the open.
“Aiuto! Qualcuno mi aiuti!”
David and Bourne exchanged glances. Even in the darkness, David could see that the a wild excitement dancing in Bourne’s beetle-like eyes. The hunt was on.
Without explanation, Bourne began jogging heavily towards the sparse woodlands that stretched from the South. The trees were pathetically wiry and thin and spread few and far between but it was sufficient cover to hide a number of men. Or a single intruder, David realised.
As the three men moved cautiously towards the woodlands, a disgusting stench seemed to rise up and punch David squarely in the face. The stench of urine, the stench of human waste and…and…the stench of death.
“Aiuto! In nome di Dio, aiutami!”
It was unmistakably the screams of a dying man. A man who, as far as Bourne was concerned, couldn’t die soon enough.
Moving through a particularly rough patch of foliage, the party stopped. Because there, crumpled desperately before them, was the enemy.
David actually felt rather disappointed. He had always been told that the Fascist forces under Hitler and Mussolini were heartless, brutal, evil…bastards. The man before him didn’t exactly fit this description. In fact, David had never seen a more pathetic figure.
Warm blood seeped from a vicious gash to the man’s forehead, his eyes were glazed over and beginning to roll into their sockets and his entire body lay limp on the desert’s floor.
“Bloody Dago bastard,” snarled Bourne. “Probably trying to cut our throats while we slept,”
David was about to answer back but he couldn’t move. His eyes were fixed on the man who even now was spluttering out his final choked breaths. His stomach gave a horrible squirm. The man could not have been very much older than Puck.
The Italian soldier suddenly seemed aware of the Allied presence. He looked up at them blindly, dying breaths rattling his body.
“Io…Io…arrendersi. Per favore. Misericordia!” he choked wretchedly, reminding David horrifically, yet so vividly, of a gutted fish.
The only member of John Hadfield’s squad who had any proficient grasp on the Italian language - with the exception of a a shady, weasel-faced man by the name of Archer - was Private Teal – but both David and Puck had at least a basic grasp on what the dying man was saying. He was begging for mercy.
Shooting Bourne a glance, David knew that none would be forthcoming. If his countless wounds didn’t kill him, then Kieran Bourne would.
“I…I don’t want to look at him anymore,” murmured Puck, his face ghostly pale, his lower lip wobbling rebelliously. Bourne span around to face Puck and for the first time in his life, David saw the man smile.
“Well, luckily, you won’t have to for much longer,” he said dangerously softly. “Because you’re going to kill him…aren’t you, private?”
“I…what…?”
“Kill him. Do you want me to draw you a diagram?”
“I can’t,”
“Yes. You can,”
“I can’t,”
“You will,” snarled Bourne, all traces of softness removed from disformed face. “And that’s an order. Unless you fancy being court-martialled?”
Puck was shaking uncontrollably. David knew that the young man saw this war as little more than a game. But now, it looked like the rules had changed. And suddenly, the game wasn’t easy anymore.
David stared at his boots. He couldn’t let Puck kill a defenceless man, it would destroy him. And Puck was one of the last bastions of innocence within the battallion…
“I’ll do it,” he said quietely, looking down expressionlessly at the dying man at his feet. “I’ll…I’ll bloody do it,”
Smirking, Bourne handed him his own Webley Mk IV
Revolver; a side-arm that had doubtless spilt its fair share of German blood.
The metal was cold in David’s trained hands but the steely look in Bourne’s eyes was colder. There were few men the young man hated more than the Sergeant, and he silently vowed to one day make Bourne feel as utterly hopeless as the Italian whose death warrant he had effectively signed.
Feeling his blood run cold, David swallowed and took a deep breath, a luxury the Italian could no longer afford. The private squeezed the trigger of the revolver with one sudden, fatal flex of his finger.
And suddenly, David Redwood was a killer.
Graci. 
